The trouble with being an aspiring master of the universe – and with being perverse enough to create one’s own universe in which to vent one’s petty dictatorships – is that running a universe is always a bigger job than it looks like at first. Predestination is rolling along well, but if I’m to finish it by my self-imposed deadline of November 1, I’ve gotta get cracking. Here’s the current state of play.
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81,475 / 125,000 |
The October 2007 issue of LinuxJournal hits the stands today, and the apparent obscenity seems again without end. This time, they’ve brought me on to propagate the new media gospel of guerrilla video editing with open source software.
It’s a disgraceful, disreputable thing to do. It undermines good old American values of oligarchic software pricing.
Which, of course, make it worth doing in the first place.
But Open Source multitrack video editors are finally becoming viable contenders, which makes my day-job as a video producer much more fun and interesting, so, naturally, as a writer I find it useful to whore myself out for money and name recognition to essentially do the “Ooh, come look at my shiny new toy. Sure, it’s not perfect, but look how shiny!!!” routine.
So go forth! LinuxJournal is usually carried by Barnes and Noble and other distressingly reputable establishments and newsttands. The cover looks something like this:
This time, you can judge a magazine by its cover – it’s dark and dangerous and has an ominous-looking linuxphone on the cover, so you know you’re descending into darkness.
Having discovered the magical power of creating new blog post titles by recombining words from previous short stories and novels, your humble narrator has decided, after much deliberation, to open the official “George Lucas Jedi Academy of Title Creation.” The building will sit alongside the “Joseph Campbell Memorial Plot Workshop (For Those Who Can’t Be Bothered to Read Mythology or Psychology Themselves).”
In other news, the first episode of Sculpting God is all recorded. I have a bit of post production to do on it, and then it’ll be ready to go up. Another episode will be ready about the same time. One more beyond that, and I will start the podcast – at this point, it’s looking like Sept 21 or thereabouts will be the beginning. More updates on that soon.
Predestination update:
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73,860 / 125,000 |
Despite what the word meter tells you, I should actually be done by November. This draft is a polish draft, and most of what needed polishing and fixing were the first three sections, and that’s about done. The rest is bringing the balance of the novel into stylistic conformity with the rewritten first half. It’s going along gangbusters, and we’ll start the podcast for it in December – consider it a Christmas/Solstice/hey-we-get-this-time-of-year-off-for-some-reason-let’s-get-drunk present.
In other news, I’m teaming up with my friend Zoe Winters to do a competitive NANOWRIMO this year. I have a SF/Fantasy/horror/romance story that I’ve been thinking about writing for a while now, and it seems like the right time to do it – it’ll give me a good break from the Predestination universe before I dive back in in January to write the sequel: “Free Will and Other Compulsions,” which I’ll need to have done by July so I can start podcasting it next fall.
Watch this space for more news – there is a LOT upcoming guaranteed to warp your brain and make you think about all those things your mother used to smack you for.
